As expected, 'Game of Thrones' is most pirated show of the year

According to Torrentfreak, 'Game of Thrones' was the most pirated TV show of the year, not unexpectedly.

The finale of the HBO fantasy series saw over 5.9 million downloads via BitTorrent, beating out the estimated TV viewership of 5.5 million.

Competition was strong this year, and the series finale of "Breaking Bad" and the latest season of "The Walking Dead" also saw strong piracy, garnering 4.2 million and 3.6 million downloads, respectively.

Earlier this year, Game of Thrones set the record for "most people sharing a copy of an episode simultaneously" at 170,000 and the piracy throne is unsurprising as most of the other shows on the list are available on cable or broadcast TV and also available on services like Hulu and Netflix after they have aired. HBO has not licensed its programming to other streaming providers, no matter the price.

Attached is the full list, which uses "data by TorrentFreak based on several sources, including download statistics reported by public BitTorrent trackers." The site does note that since many private trackers, cyberlockers and online streaming services are impossible to include, the piracy figures posted are a lot lower than they otherwise would be.